Edited by: Advaita Singh
For someone whose dinner table conversations are far from the ones which discuss art and literature, but has bookshelves overflowing with poetry books, this is a question that I have been asked most by everyone at home. It is neither an accusatory question nor a mocking one, but a very innocent query that my parents have about their daughter’s favourite thing. Due to the very nature of their query, I have never answered them just for the sake of answering. I have spent a lot of time framing my answer in a way that they recognize poetry as a human need and not just as a topic of discourse meant for intellectuals. I thought I might share it with you as well.
As Audre Lorde puts it, “poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought of. It is a vital necessity of our existence.” And so, I read poetry because I need it. I need it to resonate, to derive aesthetic pleasure, to escape, and to express. Above all, I need poetry to pause.
The nature of matter is restlessness. We constantly move. Even when we are physically immobile, our thoughts are participating in their own marathon in our minds. At any given moment, we are nothing but a collection of embodied, but ever-changing tensions and conditionings. We can neither stop moving nor let go of these tensions, because what if we lose ourselves in the process of losing our conditionings? Living with this realisation is not the most wonderful experience. This is exactly where poetry comes into the picture. It eases me.
When someone writes a poem, they exist in a space different from ours. A space that allows them to express their emotions with utmost intricacy. A space that lets them reach the zenith of their creative potential. A space that makes sure that they’re capable of transferring the pause that they experienced before and while writing the poem, to their readers through words. A beautiful poem for me is simply a portal to this sacred space, wherein the reader gets the taste of the poet’s pause as well as gets to experience an entirely new pause of their own.
Hence, reading poetry is a ponderous activity, it only speaks to you when you step out of time. It is when your sense of self becomes close to being uncemented from reality. Even if it is for a brief moment, I feel like I am beyond the categorisations that I have placed on myself. I experience the poet’s poetic freedom. The poet and I get bound by the ‘aha’ pact; I feel the same ‘aha’ while reading the poem that they felt while writing it and nothing is more heartfelt than that.
If I have mentioned pause more times than you would’ve liked, why don’t you take a pause and read it again? All I have been trying to say is that the nature of matter is restlessness and we need to pause to counter it. We need poetry to conquer it. At least, I do.